The formal planting of gardens dates way back to the beginnings of recorded history. What began as a desire to plant useful plants and trees closer to the community gradually evolved into individual homeowners designing, planting, and manicuring their yards according to their particular desires. Lawns have played an important role in gardens for several hundred years. However, before Edwin Buddings' 1830 invention of the cutting device predecessor, lawns were normally reserved for the upper classes—those who could afford to hire gardeners to trim their lawns with hand shears.
As the mechanical and electrical arts evolved, so did the quality and complexity of cutting devices. While the first cutting devices were human or animal-driven, the advent of electricity and the gas engines made possible an entirely new method of cutting grass: one that did not require extreme exertion from humans or their work animals. Electric cutting devices have a built-in disadvantage in that to function they need to be hooked up to an electrical outlet, which causes problems when the extension cord being used is shorter than the far reaches of the lawn. Other common problems include a sudden loss of power when the extension cord detaches from either the electrical outlet or from the cutting device, the generally underpowered nature of electric engines that run off 110 Volts, and the danger that a user will cut through the extension cord while running the cutting device back and forth over the same section of grass.
While electrical cutting devices are relatively environmentally-friendly, the same cannot be said for gasoline-powered cutting device. While gasoline-powered cutting devices do not require electrical cords, thereby avoiding two of the main problems inherent in electric cutting devices, and they are generally more powerful than electric cutting devices, there is growing concern over the pollution emanating from them. Indeed, the gasoline-powered cutting device may be the single largest source of completely unregulated pollution in the United States today. Nearly every household has one, they are not required to have catalytic converters, and there are no smog emissions requirements for cutting devices. Indeed, most gasoline-powered cutting devices are built with little room to fine-tune the engine other than replacing the spark plug and cleaning the air filter from time to time. According to some experts, a cutting device will spill out more pollutants in an hour than a well-tuned automobile engine will create in 1,000 hours of driving.
Thus, the pollution resulting from gasoline-powered cutting devices is a major problem and as our society becomes more and more concerned over environmental quality, and with EPA-mandated regulations being imposed in 2007, it will become more and more desirable to use a manually-powered cutting device. Indeed, several states have already implemented programs to decrease the pollutants from gas mowers.
While manual cutting devices avoided the pollution associated with gasoline-powered lawnmowers, the manual mowers invented to date have not been ideal. The major problems with manual cutting devices of the past were that a) they were hard to steer, b) their cutting method was less than optimally efficient, and c) they relied to a large extent on continuous pushing by the user to continue turning the cutting blades; when the user stopped pushing the machines, the blades quickly ground to a stop.
Pollution is not the only drawback to gasoline-powered cutting devices. They are often hard to start, are heavy and hard to push, are very loud, and have engines which require occasional maintenance. Indeed, the gasoline-powered cutting device has not undergone a significant design change in nearly half a century. Thus, there has existed a long-felt need for a human powered cutting device which avoids the problems associated with the current array of human-powered, electric, and gasoline-powered cutting devices.
The current invention provides just such a solution by having a lightweight cutting device, which is easy to push and turn, can be stored conveniently, does not require gasoline or electrical devices to start and function, does not emit pollution, requires minimal maintenance, and cuts grass substantially better than the existing human-powered cutting devices. There are several key elements to this invention. First, the device relies of state-of-the-art bicycle technology, so, rather than trying to make a traditional lawnmower work more efficiently, the inventor has taken a high tech racing bicycle made it cut grass. He has accomplished that by changing the configuration of a bicycle so that rather than having a rider pump peddles to turn wheels, applicant uses the motion of the wheels, generated by having a person push the device, and uses this energy to turn a blade assembly. By using strong yet extremely light weight parts, applicant's device is substantially lighter than traditional lawnmowers, and his use of high tech, low friction bearing assemblies allows the moving parts of his invention—such as the cutting blades—to move at speeds and low levels of friction that are unknown in traditional lawnmowers. Second, while traditional lawnmower rely on a direct gearing between the wheels and blade assembly, applicant uses a variety of gear rings and chains to achieve a mechanical advantage, up to an including a double overdrive system, by which he powers the blade assembly to turn at a rate much higher than possible in a traditional lawnmower. Thus, applicant's invention allows for a much higher rate of movement of blade assembly, where the high rate of movement is sustained for prolonged periods of time because of the low friction, high tech bearings, with minimal effort on the part of the user of the invention. Third, the device relies upon preferably air-filled, spoke rimmed tires, much more similar in weight, size, and appearance to bicycle tires than to the solid plastic or rubber wheels found on traditional lawnmowers. The larger size allows the wheels to easily roll over irregularities in the grass upon which a traditional tire might bog down or even stop. The low friction bearings in the wheels allow the device to move over the ground with considerably less effort than would be needed to move a traditional lawnmower.
In this respect, before explaining at least one embodiment of the invention in detail it is to be understood that the embodiments of the invention are not limited in their application to the details of construction and to the arrangement of the components set forth in the following description or illustrated in the drawings. The embodiments of the invention are capable of being practiced and carried out in various ways. In addition, it is to be understood that the phraseology and terminology employed herein are for the purpose of description and should not be regarded as limiting.